Masdar Carbon, one of the five business units of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi national clean energy conglomerate, announced yesterday in Abu Dhabi that it is moving ahead with a carbon capture and sequestration facility that will capture nearly 1 million tons of CO2 annually at the Emirates Steel complex at Mussafah.

The CO2 feed stream from the Emirates Steel plant will be compressed, dehydrated and then pumped through 50km of pipeline and injected in an onshore field, operated by Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations.

Part of the collaboration between Masdar and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the carbon capture facility is part of a program to explore joint projects between the two firms to reduce the carbon footprint of the emirate. The UAE has the second-highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, mostly because of it’s energy-intensive industrial base and extreme climatic conditions.

“Climate change is not a mirage,” Masdar Carbon Director Bader Al Lamki told me at the World Future Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi as we sat down to talk on Thursday.

“The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized CCS as a means to reduce carbon emissions,” and “the International Energy Agency clearly states that CCS is part of the answer for climate change mitigation.”

“The close collaboration between Masdar Carbon and ADNOC will ensure steady progress and the project will take us another step closer to implementing measures for the reduction of carbon emissions and contributing to Abu Dhabi’s clean energy initiatives,” said Al Lamki said.

Bader Al Lamki explained that successful carbon capture projects are anticipated to have a positive long-term economic impact on Abu Dhabi including economic growth, job creation and the development and export of CCS-related technology know-how.

“It will also decisively affirm our global status as a major developer of carbon abatement projects and technologies,” Al Lamki said.

Mandated by the Abu Dhabi government to drive cleaner fossil fuel energy and energy efficiency at an industrial level, monetizing emission reductions along the way, Masdar Carbon provides technical assistance, project management, carbon finance and emissions trading expertise to asset owners primarily in the oil and gas and power sectors in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

And as was announced earlier in the week by Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond in Abu Dhabi, Masdar will be partnering with Scotland, another small, oil-producing nation gunning to ramp up its renewable energy portfolio, to develop advancements in CCS technology, value chain applications, policy and deployment strategies for clean energy and CCS.

Article by Timothy Hurst, appearing courtesy Earth & Industry.

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Adding a charred biomass material called biochar to glacial soils can help reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Studies by scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are providing valuable information about how biochar-the charred biomass created from wood, plant material, and manure-interacts with soil and crops. As part of this effort, ARS scientists in St. Paul, Minn., are studying biochar activity in soils formed from glacial deposits. ARS Soil and Water Management Research Unit in St. Paul, found that amending glacial soils with biochar made from macadamia nut shells reduced a range of greenhouse gas emissions.

Biochar or terra preta is a charcoal like material created by pyrolysis of biomass. Biochar is under investigation as an approach to carbon sequestration via bio-energy with carbon capture and storage. Biochar thus has the potential to help mitigate climate change, via carbon sequestration. Independently, biochar can increase soil fertility, raise agricultural productivity and reduce pressure on forests. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon and can endure in soil for thousands of years.

After the researchers amended the soils with biochar at levels ranging from 2 to 60 percent, emission levels for the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide were suppressed at all amendment levels. But the suppression in nitrous oxide emission was notable only in soils amended with 20, 40 or 60 percent biochar.

The amended soils also had lower microbial production of carbon dioxide and lower volatilization rates for the pesticides atrazine and acetochlor. The scientists plan to follow these findings with new investigations on how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in biochar affect soil microbe activity. As part of this work, they have already identified 200 different VOCs on some biochars.

Spokas and Baker also conducted the first study that documented the formation of ethylene, a key plant hormone that helps regulate growth, from biochar and soils amended with biochar. They found that ethylene production in biochar-amended, non-sterile soil was twice as high as ethylene production observed in sterile, biochar-amended soil.

This strongly suggests that soil microbes are active in this biochar-induced ethylene production. The scientists also believe ethylene might be involved in plants’ reaction to biochar additions, since even low ethylene concentrations produce various plant responses.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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A coal-powered plant in West Yorkshire has launched the UK’s largest carbon capture initiative, a pilot project expected to siphon off about 100 tons of carbon dioxide daily.

The equipment, which was added to the 200-megawatt Ferrybridge Power Station, will capture only 2.5 percent of the plant’s total emissions, but is a sign of some progress in a carbon capture and sequestration industry that has endured setbacks this year.

The project will not attempt to store the carbon, but instead test the CO2 scrubbing, or removal, phase of the process. Proponents hope it will represent a bridge between smaller-scale pilot projects and commercially viable CO2-capture technology.

UK officials this week postponed the investment of £1 billion into a full-scale pilot project, and earlier this year the most ambitious carbon-capture project at a U.S. coal-fired plant was shelved because of a lack of climate legislation and state support.

While carbon-capture technology is in its early stages — and remains cost-prohibitive on a commercial scale — advocates say it could become a critical option in reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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FuelCell Energy is a Danbury, Connecticut, manufacturer of ultra-clean fuel cell power plants. Their Direct Fuel Cell (DFC) systems are currently producing electricity at more than 50 locations worldwide and have generated over 850 million KWh of power.

FuelCell was recently named by the Department of Energy as the recipient of a $2,994,108 award to utilize its DFC power plant to capture carbon emitted from a conventional coal fueled power plant.

The DFC utilizes FuelCell’s patented hybrid fuel cell system.

FuelCell owns U.S. Patent No. 6,356,290, entitled “High-Efficiency Fuel Cell System” (’290 Patent). The ’290 Patent describes a carbonate fuel cell system that produces electricity through a series of chemical reactions.

Heat produced from the reactions can be used to drive an unfired turbine generator. Figure 1 of the ’290 Patent depicts a heat engine (3), shown as a turbine generator, having a gas compressor (3A), and a gas decompression section (3B). By using the exhaust heat from the carbonate fuel cell reaction to drive a turbine, the plant is able to increase its overall energy output and efficiency.

Figure 1:

Fuel cell technology is efficient because it produces energy without going through the combustion process. Rather, fuel cells use an electro-chemical process to produce electricity and heat.

As a result, unlike conventional combustion based power plants, there are no harmful NOx’s or SOx’s produced. Learn more about fuel cells here and here.

The electro-chemical process used in the DFC fuel cell, based on the ’290 Patent, involves three chemical reactions depicted below:

Reaction One (Internal Reforming): CH4 + 2H2O –> 4H2 + CO2

Reaction Two (Anode Reaction): 4H2 + 4CO3 –> 4H2O + 4CO2 + 8e-

Reaction Three (Cathode Reaction): 2O2 + 4CO2 + 8e- –> 4CO3

The first reaction takes a fuel source such as methane and combines it with steam to produce hydrogen gas and CO2. The hydrogen gas produced in the first reaction is combined with a carbonate in the anode reaction to produce water, CO2 and electrons (electricity).

The third reaction (cathode reaction) uses oxygen, CO2 and electrons to produce a carbonate and heat. The carbonate is then used in the anode reaction. The heat produced in this reaction is used to drive a turbine generator.

FuelCell’s DFC technology may be able to utilize flue gases from a fossil fuel power plant, such as a coal power plant, for use in the above process. Flue gases can be concentrated so that the CO2 can be separated from the remaining air and NOx gases.

The air and CO2 can be used in the cathode reaction. The CO2 from both the flue gases and the fuel cell reactions can be collected, stored and sold in either gas or liquid form.

According to a recent FuelCell Press Release:

FuelCell Energy’s carbonate fuel cell technology separates and concentrates CO2 as a side reaction during the power generation process. DFC carbon capture research conducted by FuelCell Energy has demonstrated the DFC is a viable technology for the efficient separation of CO2 from a variety of industrial facility flue gases such as cement plants and refineries. In addition to the carbon capture, the research also verified that DFC technology is capable of destroying some of the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in flue gas streams, thus, reducing the cost of NOx removal equipment. This award from the DOE will advance DFC carbon capture technology further by funding research to assess the capability of DFC technology to seperate the CO2 within the flue gas emitted by existing coal fired power plants in a cost-effective manner.

A Department of Energy Press Release states the Department’s goal for FuelCell’s award is to achieve at least 90 percent CO2 capture from flue gas of an existing plant with no more than a 35 percent increase in the cost of electricity produced.

FuelCell states, “Technology currently in use to capture CO2 from the emissions of coal fired power plants are energy-intensive with high operating costs. DFC power plants potentially represent an efficient and cost-effective approach to separating CO2 while generating ultra-clean power rather than consuming power, as required by current CO2 capture technologies.”

If FuelCell is able to caputure CO2 from a coal plant while producing excess electricity, it will represent a dramatic departure from current carbon capture systems, which require large amounts of energy and are net energy consumers. FuelCell’s DFC may make the illusive goal of efficient clean coal a reality.

Article by David Gibbs, appearing courtesy Green Patent Blog.

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This week, as Vice Chairman of the Review Committee for the Zayed Future Energy Prize, I had the chance to assess firsthand many great examples of renewable energy and emissions reducing technologies and solutions from SMEs & NGOs, large corporations and individuals from around the world.

In fact I was very encouraged to see that in addition to energy efficiency and carbon reduction initiatives, quite a few of this year’s submissions were from influential groups or organizations that advocate green transparency among companies around the world. What’s more, companies – particularly the larger ones that have been shortlisted for the Prize – are already accounting for their carbon footprint and notably taking action to reduce the same.

This is encouraging, but there’s still a long way to go till we reach that green dream! There’s a significant gap between the potential for deployment and impact of carbon reduction technologies – particularly CCS – and where we are at today.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have the potential to achieve substantial reductions in global energy-related CO2 emissions, and dramatically slow down global warming – if deployed at a significant scale, in a timely manner and at competitive costs (essential to attracting firm and robust investments).

In fact, the International Energy Association (IEA) estimated that by 2050, CCS could reduce the total global energy-related CO2 emissions by 50%, and help meet the overall goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2°C.

The technology and technical know-how exist. Whether it’s adding chemical scrubbers to existing coal or gas fired power plants, or building new plants that gasify the coal before burning it, or ‘carbon recycling’ (cap¬ture and process the CO2) for onward use in industrial and energy and power generation applications that create a ‘closed loop’ carbon cycle – it is evident that we have the knowledge and there is a diversified portfolio of advanced technologies available.

Back in 2008, the G8 group (which includes the U.S., Russia and Japan) made plans to launch 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects by 2010 with ‘broad deployment’ of the technology by 2020. Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that governments worldwide committed some $22.5 billion to support CCS since the beginning of 2008.

The reality today is quite a different one compared to three years ago: one fifth of the world’s CCS projects have been delayed or canceled according to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

The odds appear to be stacked against CCS, but as with any new wide-reaching technology, this is due – to a large extent – to the fact that there’s currently no precedent to follow in this new emerging sector, no global operational framework adopted yet (no explicit policy that sets limits, and hence a price tag, on greenhouse gas emissions), and there’s a high degree of experimentation that comes with that.

Still, with all its challenges, no other technology comes close to matching the potential of CCS in the fight against global warming. The most pressing issues for CCS are in the research, development and demonstration (RD&D) & policy making area. The completion of several larger-scale demonstration plants over the next few years is critical for CCS to gain market share and become commercially viable.

How will we get there?

The climate crisis requires that we act now. For every five years of inaction, there’s an extra gigatonne of gas emissions waiting to be reduced.

The CCS industry stands to benefit from the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which can potentially stimulate growth and provides additional incentives for CCS projects around the world to become economically feasible.

No doubt, this is a prolific time for energy technologies. I think the critical factor lies in stronger collaboration and commitment between all the parties involved: governments and the private sector, the companies developing alternative carbon-capture approaches and the ones creating the infrastructure intended to sequestrate the carbon dioxide.

This is precisely what the Zayed Future Energy Prize aims to fuel globally: collaboration and a community of innovation, knowledge and best practice sharing.

I am a passionate supporter of the Prize and I am proud that the UAE has committed to taking a leadership role in renewable energy and sustainability, its role in the CCS sphere is particularly notable as the potential for the deployment of such technologies is tremendous, here and around the world.

I firmly believe that over the next few years CCS will emerge as an economically attractive technology for mitigating carbon emissions on a large scale, and I’m looking forward to hearing over the coming years about more and more new CCS solutions from the Zayed Future Energy Prize – the world’s stage for future energy innovations!

Article by Bader Al Lamki, Director of Masdar Carbon

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Carbon sequestration is the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is the process of carbon capture and storage, where carbon dioxide is removed from flue gases, such as on power stations, before being stored in underground reservoirs. There are also natural sequestration processes such as the ocean. Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels. The lack of a settled legal framework that balances private property rights while maximizing the public good ultimately hinders the large-scale commercial deployment of geologic carbon sequestration, according to research by A. Bryan Endres, a professor of agricultural law at the University of Illinois.

In order to justify the extensive up-front capital investment by firms, issues with the property rights of the subsurface pore space that would permanently house the captured carbon dioxide must be resolved first, says A. Bryan Endres, a professor of agricultural law at Illinois.

“You have a new technology that requires a lot of upfront capital investment, but you don’t have a legal framework for how you’re going to be able to implement this technology with regard to property rights,” said Endres, who also is the director of the university’s European Union Center. “What’s unique about property rights is they’re usually pretty well settled, and yet here we are dealing with a situation where ownership isn’t quite so clear. That’s a key question, because a firm isn’t going to invest money in a carbon sequestration plant before they are confident about who owns the area underneath.”

According to the study, published in the University of Illinois Law Review, ownership of the pore space at the depths necessary for permanent geologic carbon sequestration is still an open question in the vast majority of states.

“Right now, only Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota have assigned the property rights of the pore space to the surface property owner,” Endres said. “While that might make good political sense, I don’t think that makes good policy sense because it creates a patchwork of small land-holdings. With carbon sequestration, the geology is going to determine the limits, not some grid-based property system. This is why we need to have legislative involvement to clarify the situation.”

Like air transport, carbon sequestration should be thought of as a public good — one that has the added potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb global climate change.

“It makes more sense to treat it as you would airspace for an airplane, in that it belongs to the state and they can decide who’s going to access it,” Endres said. “It would be a much more efficient system if the state had ownership of it.”

Endres notes that there’s also the potential for states to generate a significant amount of revenue from carbon sequestration, either through an auction or a royalty system.

While this isn’t necessarily the silver bullet to reverse carbon dioxide emissions, Endres says it’s one of many ready-made and already available tools that could slow the growth rate of global climate change.

“This is a technology that will allow us to utilize natural resources like coal while also shrinking its carbon footprint,” he said. “So it’s important to get this framework in place so the industry can really take off, because now you just have a lot of speculation, experimental labs and pilot projects. This is something that needs to get developed sooner rather than later.”

The question of legal rights will be a sharply debated issue for decades still. Both sides will use the facade of property right for their own positions.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has selected four projects for continued research into developing carbon capture technologies, with the goal of achieving 90 percent carbon dioxide removal.

While existing carbon capture technologies require enormous amounts of energy — adding as much as 80 percent to the cost of electricity for a new coal plant and significantly reducing the efficiency of the operation — federal officials hope new advancements will reduce that to no more than 35 percent.

According to the department’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE), the $67 million commitment over four years will focus on advanced solvent-based, post-combustion carbon capture technologies, which could provide the most near-term benefits since they can be added to existing power plants.

The projects, managed by the FE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, include a pilot project that uses an amine-based process being developed by Linde LLC; carbon absorber retrofit equipment being tested at a Colorado Springs power plant by the Neumann Systems Group, Inc.; and waste heat integration methods being developed by Southern Company and the University of Kentucky Research Foundation.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a rule to advance the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies, while protecting American health and the environment. CCS technologies allow carbon dioxide (CO2) to be captured at stationary sources – like coal-fired power plants and large industrial operations – and injected underground for long-term storage in a process called geologic sequestration.

The proposal is consistent with recommendations made by President Obama’s interagency task force on CO2 sequestration and helps create a consistent national framework to ensure the safe and effective deployment of technologies that will help position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race. Last week’s proposal will exclude from EPA’s hazardous waste regulations CO2 streams that are injected for geologic sequestration in wells designated for this purpose under the Safe Drinking Water Act. EPA is proposing this exclusion as part of the agency’s effort to reduce barriers to the use of CCS technologies.

Carbon capture and storage, alternatively referred to as carbon capture and sequestration, is a means of mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming. The process is based on capturing carbon dioxide from large point sources, such as fossil fuel power plants, and storing it in such a way that it does not enter the atmosphere. It can also be used to describe the scrubbing of CO2 from ambient air as a geoengineering technique. Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO2 is a relatively new concept. The first commercial example was Weyburn in 2000.

Various forms have been conceived for permanent storage of CO2. These forms include gaseous storage in various deep geological formations (including saline formations and exhausted gas fields), liquid storage in the ocean, and solid storage by reaction of CO2 with metal oxides to produce stable carbonates.

Based on review of existing regulatory programs, EPA’s proposal concludes that the management of CO2 streams under the proposed conditions does not present a substantial risk to people’s health or the environment, provides regulatory certainty to industries considering the use of CCS technologies, and encourages the deployment of CCS technologies in a safe and environmentally protective manner.

The proposed rule is complementary to previous EPA rulemakings, including final rules under the Clean Air Act that require reporting by facilities that capture or inject CO2 streams, and Safe Drinking Water Act regulations that ensure the wells used for geologic sequestration of CO2 are appropriately sited, constructed, tested, monitored, and closed.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Breeding crops with deeper roots could significantly reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and make crops more drought resistant, according to a study by a researcher at the University of Manchester.

Reporting in the journal, Annals of Botany, professor Douglas Kell calculated that breeding crops whose roots extend 2 meters underground, rather than the 1-meter roots common to many crops, could double the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere.

Kell reported that creating crops and plants with deeper and bushier roots would also lead to more water and nutrient retention and produce more sustainable plant yields as the world warms and droughts increase in water-stressed regions.

“This doubling of root biomass from a nominal 1 meter to 2 meters is really the key issue,” said Kell.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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The U.S.’s most ambitious project to capture and sequester carbon from a coal-fired power plant has been shelved by a large utility company, which says that the lack of climate legislation and support from state governments has rendered the $668 million project financially untenable.

American Electric Power (AEP), which serves 5 million customers in 11 states, will announce today that it is indefinitely suspending its carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project at its Mountaineer plant in West Virginia.

The utility has been running a smaller CCS pilot project at the site for two years, but executives at the utility said that the lack of federal climate legislation had diminished incentives for CCS projects.

In addition, AEP said that the refusal of state regulators to allow the utility to pass on the cost of carbon sequestration to its customers had made it impossible to continue the project.

“We are placing the project on hold until economic and policy conditions create a viable path forward,” said AEP’s chairman, Michael G. Morris.

AEP’s action is a major setback to efforts to slow global warming using CCS technology, which faces numerous logistical and technological challenges.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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